life between the pages

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.” ― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Cold weather tends to bring out the hibernation in some of us. I happen to subscribe to this tendency, and do not apologize. Nothing seems more apt when the wind howls at the door than to curl up with a good book, snuggled deep in the blankets, the better to doze when the inclination takes us.

“I sit beside the fire and thinkOf all that I have seenOf meadow flowers and butterfliesIn summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamerIn autumns that there wereWith morning mist and silver sunAnd wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and thinkOf how the world will beWhen winter comes without a springThat I shall ever see

For still there are so many thingsThat I have never seenIn every wood in every springThere is a different green

I sit beside the fire and thinkOf people long agoAnd people that will see a worldThat I shall never know

But all the while I sit and thinkOf times there were beforeI listen for returning feetAnd voices at the door”